COMPULINK3300 Overland Avenue, Suite 201 § Los Angeles, California 90034 § 310 × 204 × 5121 

Initializing In-House Charge Accounts

To initialize the account of an in-house charge account, you want to record the customers’ balance as they were at the beginning of the current month. The Jewelry Shopkeeper screen to use is Edit/Open Charge Accounts [8,1,4 from the Main Menu]

Typically you enter the opening balance in three places: the 0—30 Days bin, the Initial Balance bin and the Opening Balance bin. If you happen to know that the customer’s balance is over a month old, you could enter the balance in the 30—60 or 60—90 or the Over 90 bin as appropriate. Note that the Current bin should be left as zero and that the total of Current + 0—30 + 30—60 + 60—90 + Over 90 equals the total balance but usually you start with only one of these bins filled in. For credit balances use negative numbers.

Fill in the current month’s required payment in the Curr. Pmt. Due: bin. Notice that this should not include any past due amounts. Fill in any past due payments (required payments that were not made in previous months) in the Past Due bins. When you print statements, the Jewelry Shopkeeper will sum the Past Due bins and the Curr. Pmt. Due bins and print this total as the Minimum Payment.

In general you should leave the Special Primary Int Rate and the Special Secondary Int Rate bins as zero; this way the customer will receive the standard interest rate that you specify in the Accounts Receivable Defaults screen. You should only fill in the interest rate on the customer screen if this customer is receiving a special interest rate that is different from the standard store-wide interest rate. If this customer should never have finance charges, choose No next to the question: Assess Finance Charges.

If you choose Yes to Assess Late Charges, the customer will only be charged late charges if the customer has missed minimum payments and you have a late charge formula in the Accounts Receivable Defaults screen.

If this customer has a fixed dollar-amount that he is required to pay each month, you can fill in that amount in the Monthly Payment Plan bin. By filling in an amount here, you are designating this customer a Contract Account (or Installment) Customer. If you leave this bin zero, then the customer’s minimum required payment is calculated as a percentage of his outstanding balance, where the percentage is specified on the Accounts Receivable Defaults screen.